China

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day 1
After dreading the 12 hour flight to Beijing from Heathrow it wasnt to bad compared to the ryan air standards that im used to. There was lot of films and programmes to choose from + free beer which i took full advantage of.

finding our way around the airport was pretty straight foward as most of the signs had been translated to english, it was only when we tried to get a taxi that the language barrier became a problem. After some pointing and some manadrin words that some chinese guy had taught us on the plane we were on our way. The first observation that i made while in the taxi is that the Chinese cant drive and they make full use of their horns, it seems pedestrians, animals and all type of vehicles use the roads together in a way that i havnt quite worked out yet, the green red light doesnt mean stop to traffic and the green man doent mean walk to pedestrians and zebra crossings are only there for decoration.

We were dropped off at what we thought was our hotel in Beijing. We didnt speak a word of mandarin and the staff didnt speak a word of english, but eventually we were directed to a room were we dumped our stuff. According to the trip notes we should have been met by a guide and other travelers from the tour. As the receptionist looked blankly while we tried to explain we decided to have a search round beijing. when i figure out how to do it ill just upload the photos instead of typing exactly what we did because i cant be arsed at the moment.

After seeing the seeing the various sites and been lost for several hours we made it back to the hotel expecting to see a tour guide and group waiting for us. However this wasnt the case. We decided to ring one of the numbers that we had incase of an emergency, and as it turned out we were at the wrong hotel. We quickly left and headed for where we were supposed to be.

We arrived at the hostel and met with our tour guide who seems really good, she is a local who will accomapny us and 4 others for 23 days on our trip.

day 2.

The great wall

We met on the coach at 8 were we met with the others from the group: Jackie 27 from Aus, Elana 34 from Aus/Argentinia and Kent 22 from Denmark all who are on their way with various travels.
After getting to know each other and still feeling very jetlagged we headed for the great wall via a 3 hour taxi ride. ( ill update later when i have more time as ive got to leave the hostel in 35 mins and enjoy a 12 hour train journey to Gongazhoe or something like that )

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